New version of the suggestion voting script thing over on the sidebar! We're now on version Alpha-Omicron 1.2. Hopefully it still works, hopefully some of the bugs have been ironed out, and hopefully someone will think of a catchy name for it.
If you find a fault, please report it! Thanks!
Though I was working all Saturday, went to church twice on Sunday and went round someone's house for lunch on Sunday, I still managed to watch five hours and fifteen minutes of Firefly. It is possibly the greatest tv show since Buffy, the only downer being you know that it's been cancelled and you'll never find out the truth. Shakes angry fist at 20th Century Fox.
David asks:
"Why did they allow 'Kitten' into the 'house', rather than some sort of death-world?"
Because channel four didn't have the rights to 'death world'™. Rupert Murdoch owns the rights to absolutely everything death world™, so expect to see death world™ on Sky One soon. As well as this we can be expecting 'death world'™ the chat show (where people writhing in eternal torment are interviewed), 'death world'™ the cartoon (computer generated!) and 'death world'™ the action figure (see also, Barbie).
Good news though, channel four is hoping to get the rights to 'unpleasant pugatory world'. If they do, filming starts in September.
Opposite my house are two phone boxes. I can see that from my window if I happen to look that way. Everyday people visit one of these two phone boxes, but only one. The one on the left never ever gets used. The one on the right is used about once every twenty minutes, perhaps more. The other day, while walking home some young lady in the phone box saw me, and stopped what she was doing. She stood in the phone box and looked at her nails as I went past. From my house three minutes later I could see she was on the phone. I've seen people queue up outside the phone box while it's been in use and stare down at their feet the entire time. I've lost count of the times I've been asked for change to make a phone call when walking to and from home, although in fairness that's probably because it's not the sort of thing I keep track of.
I'm assuming that it's all drugs related, and some supplier will only accept calls if coming from this phone box. However, what, if anything, do I do with this knowledge? I'm sure some hilarities can come from this, if only I could think of some.
My friend and I decided that when speaking to a girl who you feel remotely attracted to you need to ask them a few questions. These questions aren't there to show how caring you are or to establish the best plan of attack (men think like this), rather they are there to put you off. The questions should be so hard to get perfectly right that you'll realise that this girl isn't for you and so you'll stop flirting with her (like the fool that you are). In the end we decided that you only need to really ask them two questions, however these two questions should be so impossibly hard to answer 100% correctly that their is no chance of them doing so. While other people's questions will differ, here are mine.
For the benefit of anyone who is trying to find information about enthusiastic dualism on the internet and coming up with nothing: Sparticus' Guide To Enthusiastic Dualism.
Disclaimer. All this information has been gathered from lecturers and off the internet. I haven't seen a copy of the orginal article that first talked about it. This may be completly wrong, but I don't think it is.
Enthusiastic dualism seems to be a term first coined by a guy called Laurence Singlehurst. He wrote about it in a Youth With A Mission mailing. Possibly an e-mail mailing or a postal mailing, I'm not sure. Enthusiastic dualism is basically when young people act like Christians one day and don't at all the next day, but importantly they don't see this as being a problem and have no moral qualms about this.
This is a section I've found of the original article on the internet
Enthusiastic dualism is the capacity, particularly seen amongst young people, to hold Christian views and beliefs in the Christian part of your life (the youth meeting and church), but when at the night club (or school, university or whatever) with your non-Christian friends, hold the beliefs and values of the night club and do what everybody else does. Your values, beliefs and behaviours are those of your friends. You move between worlds with no sense of conscience, and hold inconsistent viewpoints. This will stagger many of you reading this, because you grew up in an age when people believed in a big story, a meta-parable, and consistency was important.
However, what I have described about young people is increasingly alive among adults in our churches as well. It manifests itself partly as consumer church. We feel our church ought to deliver certain kinds of teaching and great programmes, and our leaders ought to do this or that; when they donít, this justifies our lack of involvement. Worse still, perhaps we have consumer God ñ where God ought to do certain things, behave in certain ways, and provide certain products, happiness and blessings. If weíre sick, or experience hard times, we feel that God has failed, and therefore we donít have to be so committed. Finally, some adults are living in two worlds at once. Though Christian at church, their Christianity doesnít go to work with them ñ they leave it behind. They do not have a holistic approach, and are not being salt and light outside the Christian environment.I've emailed YWAM requesting they put the article back up online, but no luck as of yet. I will update if I recieve a reply
Personally I've never seen this behaviour, and I'm a bit suspicious as to whether it actually exists (but then I'm always suspicious when people say about how stuff is a new post-modern trend and use words like 'meta-parable'). Sure there are people who act like Christians one day and then don't the next, but I've yet to see someone feel completely happy with this and not feel any moral qualms about it. It also sticks out against my understanding of predestination/salvation/santification. Surely if someone is genuinely saved then they'll be convicted of guilt about this enthusiastic dualism and if they aren't genuinely saved then they'll still be being taught that what they are doing is wrong. It just seems like it's not the big new thing that I've been led to believe it is and rather just another old occasional thing.
Update
I've been e-mailed the article in full and will put it online at some point.
Sorry for the light posting, I've been up to my eyeballs in coursework, and when I have been online I've been mostly posting over here on the big brother blog, or contributing to a rather large Christianity thread on the Kinesis message boards. On top of it all, I'm away this weekend.
Note to all regular posters of 'do this quiz' images in the comments. You are all banned from posting further quizzes or quiz images. I know where you live. Don't make me come to your houses and kick your butts.
My degree is not a proper degree. It is BA honours degree in Youth and Community work and Applied Theology that is accredited by Oxford Brookes. Because it is not a proper degree I do not attend Oxford Brookes for lectures though I do have an Oxford Brookes Student Union Card, an Oxford Brookes Library card and a government loan for my degree at Oxford Brookes. Because it is not a proper degree I only attend lectures once a fortnight thought I do currently do thirty hours more a term than the average student. Because it is not a proper degree, I work for a charity at the same time as doing my degree as part of my studies for a JNC qualifications. The first year qualifications for the JNC need are around thirty thousand words.
So it's not a proper degree.
Note: This is the first of a series of posts under the category "Questions asked frequently enough to really annoy me"
I'm not particularly capitalist and while generally I discourage spontaneous shopping sprees you need to buy the new Reuben single. If you have to re-mortgage your house to purchase it then do so! And seeing as you've just re-mortgaged your house, buy the new The Killers album if only for the song "Mr Brightside".
Rock music has never been so good.
Normally I'm a big fan of the British way of dealing with things, but sometimes I wish we were just that bit more American. The bassist in a Clash tribute band texts the lyrics of a Clash song to the lead singer. The lyrics contain the words "gun" and "jet airliner". Unfortunately he sends the text message to the wrong person on his phone. Now here's where it all goes a bit wrong. A month later, special branch don't organise a co-ordinated raid on his home. They don't break down his front door, they don't surround his house with armed police officers and they don't drag him into the back of an armoured police van in front of his family and neighbours. Instead, they send a officer round to have a chat with him.
Now, if you think that is alarming then you'd better prepared to be... uh, more alarmed, because it gets worse! They take him down to the police station and don't lock him up for hours without telling him why. Instead, while trying to find a room to question him in, they realise what's happened, and let the guy go without charging him or even giving him a warning! Good grief! To top it all off, when he gets back home neither he nor his partner sue for emotional damages. In fact, his partner actually says that "it is quite reassuring intelligence agencies are on top of these things".
Where I ask, are the lawsuits? Where are the angry protests and claims of abuse? Why was he held for such a short period of time? Why was he told exactly what he being brought to the station for? Why wasn't he shot dead standing over his toaster when special branch kicked the door down to arrest him? It's no wonder this country is going to pot! (the bbc news article)
Postscript:
You've got to love The Sun's (trashy British tabloid) version of events. "PUNK rock fan Mike Devine sent an innocent text message containing lyrics by The Clash ó and was quizzed as a terror suspect after it was INTERCEPTED" "But last night experts said the amazing incident proved NO phone call or text was now safe from monitoring in the war on terror." "Terrorism expert Chris Dobson said: 'It is clear from this incident that the computers at the GCHQ listening operation in Cheltenham have been programmed to listen in on all vocal and textual mobile phone traffic.
'They are probably programmed to pick out key words like bomb and hostage.
'Having this kind of surveillance is the price we have to pay in a modern society to protect us from terrorists.' "
Good grief you morons! Get your facts straight! The police were alerted because the person who accidently got the text message showed it to the police! It is clear from this incident that the computers at GCHQ either completely ignored this message or weren't monitoring it in the first place.
Always beware the phrase 'but/and isn't that what *whatever you are talking about* is all about'. This phrase is a diversion, designed to lead you away from the simple truth; the person you are speaking to hasn't got a single piece of evidence to backup what they are saying. By saying that their viewpoint or opinion is some how the very essence of what you are talking about throws you off course. Common examples of this are 'God likes messing with your mind' 'does He?' 'well of course, isn't that what God is all about?' or 'Rocket science is similar to opera' 'it is?' 'Opera is all about love and romance and songs and isn't that what rocket science is all about?' or 'The person is the largest person on earth, good for them!' 'why?' 'well if that's not what being grotesquely fat is all about, then I don't know what is!'
The correct answer to all these responses is 'why that is fascinating, could you explain it to me?' and while they are trying to explain themselves, push them over.
Here's some interesting news, of the ten typical work fields a graduate could go into, the bottom three are, in reverse order, Law enforcement and protection (£16,000), Education (£15,000) and Health Care (which on average would get you the grand total of £12,000)! Or you could become a manager and start at £21,000.
And there was great rejoicing as the first images of the new Zelda game were released to the general public. Hooray! I'm not sure if it's a good thing they've lost the Windwaker's comic book stylings as I was a huge fan. Ultimately though, it's a new Zelda game. Woo!
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